


The Doe

by Ohtze



Series: Meridian Verse [2]
Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drama & Romance, F/M, Knotting, SIZE KINK CENTRAL, a harsh lesson in reading the instruction manual before you put the furniture together, i should rate myself as explicit, i’ve taken your waterfall and mangled it, minor spoilers but not really, no rubber we die like men, we’re diving into the weeds faster than Shep off a cliff with the Mako
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 04:52:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10563996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ohtze/pseuds/Ohtze
Summary: There is a flash of gold and then the fire. When the Tempest goes down Ryder and Jaal are separated from the others, lost and disoriented with their comms in shambles. Sara soon discovers another meaning for the word "casualty."





	

**Author's Note:**

> **A word of warning** : I always write M+, and with that rating there comes certain expectations that most readers should be familiar with (violence, mature themes, etc.). The tags on this story are also extremely accurate. Suffice to say, things will be dark (although not as dark as they normally get). This is the only time that I'll mention it.
> 
> **Disclaimer** : This fanwork is intended for personal, non-commercial use only. All creative works off which this fanwork is based are the property of their respective authors. No copyright infringement is intended.

When Ryder was destroyed, it was done by the person she loved the most.

The destruction was a vivid, sudden thing: a flash of color and then rebirth, ripped from the minds of those that had come before her. She didn’t know she loved him until it happened. Until the Archon was jumping out of FTL with a squadron of Kett ships at his back, pinging the _Tempest_ and demanding they hand over the Pathfinder, no questions asked.

No one ever really asked for anything, Ryder was learning. Humans were squishy and weak and a bit on the short side, lacking in teeth and claws and scales. Their only defense was their unpredictability: in their ability to adapt to _genetic diversity_ , which was Lexi’s running theory on why the Archon was so focused on her. She’d touched the Remnants but so had the Kett, and there was more to the Overlord’s obsession than that.

_“Exaltation or extinction,”_ the Archon had told her, not long ago. His words had skittered through her brain across the vid screen, reaching out with skeletal fingers as if to touch her deepest thoughts. Milk white eyes like a pair of broken moons had stared at her from a dark brown face wreathed in bone, crowning his head in a halo. The Archon looked young—if Kett could look young—but Ryder knew that he wasn’t. Moon Eyes was staying fresh like the ancient countess Elizabeth Báthory; by bathing in the blood of his victims. She recognized the type.

_“Turn yourself over, or I will take you.”_

“Not likely,” Ryder said dryly, sounding far braver than she’d felt. The Archon had sneered, lips pulling back to reveal bright white teeth that were shaped like a human’s, all blunt and square. It was uncanny-valley levels of disconcerting.

“ _I_ **_will_ ** _have you,_ ” he’d said. She wasn’t allowed to belong to another.

Ryder had promptly told him to fuck off and cut the channel, after which Gil had made a couple crude jokes about inter-species relations and intergalactic diplomacy. _You know, for sport_ , he’d said. Drack had laughed.

Ryder had covered her ears and stormed from the bridge, retreating to the nearest bathroom stall where she promptly curled up and clutched at her arms to combat the anxiety. The Kett kept pinging them, but Kallo had reversed the ship and they’d beat a hasty retreat. Negotiations were over, as the saying went.

The Archon seemed to realize this too, to some extent. The next time they crossed path he arrived with an even bigger armada.

They’d been traveling to Havarl, Ryder remembered in bits and pieces when she woke up at the crash site. Their mission had been to transport a small contingent of scientists from the Nexus down to the surface to study the local flora. They were curious about the planet’s unprecedented levels of organic growth. The _Tempest_ had punched through the indigo blue sky when they’d been hit, streaking fire in a contrail behind it. The starboard side had been breached. She’d been in the loading bay collecting schematics from the Nomad just before it happened, gnawing on her bottom lip and checking the sealants on her wetsuit as she’d run over their mission in her head. Liam had been near her and he’d been staring.

“Something wrong, Ryder?” he’d asked. Sara remembered feeling sick to her stomach. She’d looked down at her feet, momentarily overcome with guilt. She couldn’t remember why.

“No,” she’d said. _Vetra should come_ she’d decided as she reached for her comm to dial the turian. The mission concerned her. Jaal too, because this was one of his worlds. He’d been in a terrible mood that morning, but Ryder figured he would accompany them if she asked. The angara was really sweet once he warmed up to you, and he was always willing to help.

There was a blank spot in her mind then, where the past flashed out in patches of grey, followed by the distinct memory of walking down the _Tempest’s_ main corridor, dodging the extra crew-members on the now too-small ship as she’d made her way up to the bridge. Someone was telling her to get in there ASAP. Then she’d heard **his** voice.

“ _Ryder.”_

After that, the first energy beam had hit. The ship was going down not long after.

Everything was fire and flashes of gold, her ears ringing and her vision doubling as she hit her head against a nearby support beam. There was a pealing screech farther down the corridor—like the squeal of brakes against a high-speed rail-track. It was followed by a popping _boom_ as the wall to her right imploded, ripping away from the ship like a banana peel.

Glass shattered everywhere. A deep roar like the oscillation of an earth-bound tornado sprung to life. The air was sucked from the room. When she came to Cora was beside her, pulling her up. Liam was nowhere to be seen.

“Move!” Cora said, and she had her helmet on. The baying increased, wind whipping past Ryder’s face with the explosive decompression. She hadn’t had her helmet on at the time and she’d been gasping, pawing desperately at her throat. Cora pawed at **her,** trying to get her off the ground. Unbolted objects broke free from their moorings to crash wildly down the corridor, hurtling past their heads. The floor was tilted on an angle towards a gaping hole in the scout ship’s side.

“Move! Move! We’re going down!”

“What happened?!” Ryder tried to say, but she could barely breathe, her limbs made useless by lack of oxygen. It was like dying with her father all over again, except her dad was gone and there was no one else to take the fall.

Sparks of silver flashed from broken wiring in the conduits above. A human crew member whom she didn’t recognize was screaming, their fingers scrabbling against the gunmetal plating as they were sucked out of the hole into open sky.

“Shit!” Cora swore, and just as Sara was starting to fade a solid, heavily muscled arm wrapped around her middle, warm and large and achingly familiar. Gloved hands pulled her up, her head lolling against a broad chest. Words were spoken in her ear, harsh and panicked.

Suddenly a mask was on her face, clamping over her nose and mouth: the sharp expulsion of rushing oxygen followed. Ryder gasped, her back arching and head bumping against someone’s chin as she clawed at the apparatus, clinging to the hand that was pressing the mask to her face. She greedily sucked in handfuls of air.

Oh goddess, the ship was falling. The ship was breaking apart what had happened–

“Get her out of here!” Cora shouted, and already Ryder was being hoisted to her feet, pulled upwards across the corridor towards the escape pods as if she weighed next to nothing. There was a patch of bright blue screaming for her attention out of the corner of her eye. Pink too, but it was coming from outside the ship, wreathed in fire, and _shit, shit, shit_ the floor was crumbling just ten paces away. Another crew member was shrieking as they were dragged across the ground through the wind tunnel.

They really **were** going down. Why were they falling?

“MOVE!” Cora screamed at the top of her lungs, pointing to the escape pods. “WE CAN’T LOSE ANOTHER PATHFINDER!”

And then Jaal was hoisting her backwards through the wreckage. Ryder remembered how her gasps were made tinny by the angara’s respirator; the way his arm had wrapped her middle as he pulled her along, pressing her tight to his front. As they staggered forward, bent double by the accelerating g-forces, they tripped over a corpse in the hall.

A salarian scientist had been leaning out of the escape pod, beckoning them forward and screaming at them over the roar of the wind to _hurry._ Jaal sprinted the last couple steps, picking Ryder up and pushing her into the pod before he gripped the edge of the opening and hoisted himself in after her.

“The others!” Ryder remembered saying, trying to crawl back into the ship towards Cora, who was still standing in the hall. “The others, we have to find them–”

But already the door was snapping shut as a fireball ballooned in front, a beam snapping loose from the nearby walkway to slice a biologist from the Nexus in half. Ryder cried out and punched the glass in response, throwing her body against it as she tried to reopen the door. Jaal yanked her back before she could unlock the seals, his hand protectively covering the back of her head. She’d wailed and struggled in his grasp.

“Ryder!” he said, speaking loudly to be heard over the cacophony of beeps and klaxons. “Ryder, please–”

“Let me go! They’re burning!”

It was too late. The escape pod had ejected, or tried to. Just as it was being spit out like a metal tongue the _Tempest_ bucked, the ship dipping low before catapulting itself into a death spiral. The shuttle was clipped upon exit.

Ryder flew from Jaal’s arms, striking the other side of the shuttle.

Then all was darkness. Silence, followed by blissful reprieve.

* * *

 

When Ryder woke up she was on the ground. Soft and spongy it felt, akin to sphagnum moss. Everything seemed to be cast in a strange, fuchsia-lit shadow, except for an odd, flickering orange hue to her left. There was the unpleasant, acidic stench of something burning nearby, a bit like melting rubber. _Crackles_ and _snaps_ , like dry twigs breaking beneath a bonfire.

The _Tempest_ was nowhere in sight.

Ryder said the first thing that came to her mind when she was conscious enough to put two and two together.

“Scott?” she asked, her words coming out in a whimper that ended in a wet, racking cough. Where was her twin? Was he okay? _He’s not here,_ a voice reminded her gently, but she didn't believe it at first. The two of them went **everywhere** together.

An iron tang was thick on her tongue. Something clammy and salt-flavored was between her lips. When she exhaled her entire side exploded in agony, her lungs tingling with an unpleasant, crushing heat that made them feel like they were on fire. A high-pitched tinnitus reverberated across her ears, fast and shallow as a mosquito’s wings. Had there been an explosion? Was she injured?

“S-Scott?” she repeated. When she coughed again, reddish fluid peppered her lips. There was still no answer. Ryder called for her father next. Then her brain caught up.

She could see nothing from where she was lying on the ground. The world was a blur of pinks and purples, mixed with stretches of blackness. The cloying, mist-laden night was so oppressive that it felt like a rotting womb. As she lay there on the ground, gasping fitfully—her arms splayed on either side of her head—Ryder blinked and tried to move her fingers, only to fail. A scent that smelt sharply of lavender was thick on the air, sweet and strong enough to be discerned beyond the musky tinder of burning rubber. The concoction was making her dizzy.

“Ryder?” someone said. Then a bit more forcefully, the deep vocals catching on the thread of her name. “Ryder?!”

Why was she on the ground? Why couldn’t she move?

“Here,” Ryder tried to say, but her voice was so soft with pain the words were less than a whisper. She closed her eyes, shutting them against the burn in her throat. When she coughed a third time the person repeated her name, the tenor to their words downright feverish.

“Ryder, where are you?”

Then Ryder remembered it. She remembered standing in the landing bay, fiddling with the zipper on the front of her wetsuit as she’d gnawed on her bottom lip. She’d been consumed with near-existential levels of angst over the best way to approach her teammates for a less-than-stellar mission, after which she’d wandered down the main corridor of the _Tempest_. Her heavy blue and white boots had struck an uneven, clanking tempo against the paneling as she’d looked at the floor and dragged her feet.

The Archon’s voice had echoed through the hollow spaces of the ship as the Kett had taken control of their communications terminal: angry and disturbingly human. The alien had a strange, almost turian-like reverberation to his tone, but it was all bent and wrong, like a fish swimming backwards. Familiar, but still a mimic.

_“Ryder,”_ the Archon had said. _“Where are you_?”

The Kett had nearly been spitting with anger. When she’d stopped dead in the hall, her heart in her throat, the spitting rage had become a shout. _“Ryder, answer me!”_

Ryder hadn’t. She’d continued to do nothing but stand there, because fuck the Council how often did an alien overlord personally demand your presence? Then there was a boom, followed by a deep, brassy _bwwammm_ as a golden beam had cut through the side of the ship. The energy weapon had moved so fast she’d barely been able to process that it **_was_ ** one, and when it’d hit them she’d been thrown to the side by its force.

The _Tempest_ had been on fire. The _Tempest_ had been **falling**. Jaal was with her, hoisting her into the transport as a salarian crew member grabbed her hands, his three fingers wrapping around her five. The escape pod had jerked beneath them before the door even closed, trying to get airborne. Metal had ground against metal, followed by something heavy and sharp striking the back of her head. There was a dull, thudding ache in her side.

“Ryder?!”

“Jaal,” she replied, back in the present. “That… that you, big guy?” Ryder hadn’t felt this awful since she’d woken up in the cryo pod and she hoped to god it was him. She was too injured to fight anything else. A muffled _thud_ sounded; the _kock_ and _bang_ of artificial debris being pushed out of the way. Ryder heard the _klink_ of a heavy weapon hitting the moss-covered ground, its locking mechanisms striking against one another like falling jewellery. She couldn’t see where the shuffling was coming from but it was getting louder. Had they crashed on Havarl? Oh god, spirits, the _Tempest_ had gone down, where were the others–

“Ryder, speak louder so I can find you,” the angara said. It took Ryder another moment to realize it **was** him, the deep rumble and rolling _r’s_ of his accent becoming unmistakable. Then, “Sara, please,” he begged.

“I c-can’t,” she whispered. A sticky warmth had coated her body, and there was a heavy weight like a giant’s paw pressing down on the front of her chest. Ryder felt feverish beneath her armor. “J-Jaal, help. I can’t, I can’t g-get–”

Her fingers twitched but she couldn’t use them.

“Just keep speaking,” the angara replied, much too quickly. There was a strange, wavering undercurrent to his tone that sounded too much like distress. The _thud_ of debris became more haphazard: a frantic sort of metallic scrabbling. Was she going to die here? Who would take care of Scott for her? “Sara, do not cry. I will find you–”

“Okay,” Ryder said, squeezing her eyes shut. Tears leaked beneath the rims a moment later, and belatedly she wondered if he could smell them first.

Ryder tried to breathe more slowly to ease the pain—her medi-gel wasn’t kicking in yet, and she **needed** it—but the action was useless. She was too panicked. Puffs of air became shallow, wheezing rasps, each one weaker than the last. Eventually Ryder managed to turn her head to her left—towards the strange, soft orange glow—in an attempt to breathe easier. When she did she almost fainted with the pain. There was an angry, rumbling hiss: a frustrated curse in Shelesh that the translators glitched over. Jaal said something else that she couldn’t pick up on. He dug faster.

_In, then out,_ Ryder reminded herself, trying to recall what her father had taught her the last time this had happened. _Breathe slower. You can do this._ She opened her eyes and immediately came face to face with the body of the scientist who had pulled her on-board, just before the _Tempest_ broke up. The salarian was missing half his head, his remaining eye squashed inwards like a black, gelatinous bowl of caviar, but she still recognized him. She’d **talked** to him, before this. _Sallin,_ his name was, and he was a friend of Kallo’s.

A sob caught in her throat.

“Sallin n-needs a medpack,” she said. Ryder wondered if she was missing half of her head, too. A piece of sheet metal was pulled to the side, followed by a shifting of dirt and a muffled _thwick_ as a long, flat object was cast atop a mossy incline. When the object was pulled back there was a flare of low heliotrope light, along with the reveal of a purple-blue sky perpetually cast in twilight. A giant fuchsia orb floated along the horizon, banded with paler shades of pink. Mist coated the ground in a low blanket, electric-hued fireflies dancing amongst human-sized purple ferns.

Havarl. They’d made it.

Ryder heard a sigh of relief. The sigh was almost immediately replaced by an audible heave of panic when her body became visible. For some reason there was an instant clenching sensation in her chest: a terrible, existential kind of agony that she couldn’t explain. Ryder’s lips parted as she started up at the stars, mindless with grief that felt like hers and someone else’s simultaneously. She tried to speak through the tears; the stilted, newborn wisps of breath that barely managed to make it past her lips. Was this what suffocation felt like? She didn’t want to die here. She didn’t even know if she was dying but she couldn’t stop thinking about the salarian.

“S-Sallin, Sallin is h-hurt–”

“Oh Sara,” Jaal said, and her insides twisted as he used her first name. They twisted as bad as Sallin’s brains scattered across the wreck of the escape pod, and Ryder might have been crying but she was so dizzy she couldn’t be sure. Nearby there was a _hoot_ , long and low like a monkey’s call. The crackling sound came from a fire, she realized, and there was a constant gasping noise, weak and reedy.

It was her.

Jaal wasn't there, and then he was. He was bending down next to her, the uneven hem of his azure blue cloak pooling atop her armored belly. Her side hurt something awful.

“Sara,” he said. A large hand slid beneath her back, the other reaching around to cradle her neck from the other side to support it. “Sara, you hit your head. Don’t look, dear one. It is not for your eyes.”

Sara’s lips twisted at the utterance of one of his many pet names for her. She tried to bite back another sob and couldn’t. It escaped her, high and thin.

Sallin was dead. Where were the others? What had happened to the _Tempest_?

Jaal wrapped his arm around her back, her head nestling in the crook of his elbow and her long ponytail trailed over the side as he picked her up. Her vision was blurry and the Angara appeared like a giant pink and purple blob floating overhead. What was that lavender smell? Why was it so _strong_ , even over the stench of the fire? It was giving her a headache.

“J-Jaal,” she whispered. Ryder felt half out of her mind with sadness. There was a hand on her face, brushing aside sweat-matted hair. Her own were curled in front of her, limp and useless. “Jaal, I don’t… don’t feel so good.”

“It’s alright, darling. I’m here.”

He shifted his hand to grip the back of her neck, a wide palm cupping her head as a thumb pressed to her cheek, keeping her skull from flopping sideways. Ryder was wheezing so hard that Jaal had to hoist her up to try to clear her airways. She could sense the angara’s breath on her temple, even though she couldn’t focus on him; the way he was curled around her, holding her like she was a brittle piece of porcelain. “J-Jaal,” she repeated, and the thumb stroked back and forth across her cheekbone in a soft but slightly frantic manner. “Jaal, I… where… what’s w-wrong–”

“Where’s your medi-gel?” he asked, quick and to the point. It took Ryder a moment to realize what Jaal was asking: for her to string two-and-two together. _He’s not mad at me anymore_ , she thought, and for a moment she couldn’t remember _why_ he would be mad at her, but she wanted to cry with relief.

“Sara, your medi-gel?” The hand on her face became more insistent, shaking her gently to try to get her to focus. If she was going to die here she didn’t want to do it alone.

“S-side,” she said, her eyes rolling and eyelids fluttering as she dipped in and out of consciousness. Jaal was warm and solid and when he held her she could breathe better. Ryder trusted him more than anyone. She trusted Scott too, but Scott was in a coma and might as well have been dead.

Jaal shook her again, jolting her awake.

“ **Sara** ,” he begged. That deep voice was cracking, the rumble distorted. He sounded upset. Why was he sad? “Sara, my sweetness, you must stay awake. Where’s your medi-gel?”

_Oh._ That’s right.

“S-switch,” she murmured, her lips turning up into a grim little smile beneath his hand. Jaal was a good person to die with, she decided. She was lucky. “S-switch, on left side under a-arm. Have to h-hit it.”

The angara fumbled with her armor, his gloved hand running clumsily over her much smaller body but taking care as he did so. He couldn’t seem to find the latch.

Ryder spent most of her time simply laying there, her eyelids heavy as she focused on some random spot on his bright blue rofjinn, watching with fascination at the way that the fabric bunched over heavy pectoral muscles. Jaal was built like a tank, but when he wasn’t handling something tiny he moved much more gracefully. There was a curse, then a slight tugging sensation along her side. The angara brought his hand up, angling it towards his mouth. When it returned his palm was bare, fingers fumbling a little less clumsily over her armor. Jaal’s hand briefly glanced against her neck, skin to skin. Ryder shivered, turning to stare in the general direction of his face.

She felt him reach under her arm, the bulk of his own lifting hers up as he hit the manual switch. There was a _hiss_ , then the cool release of medi-gel flooding her system. Ryder gasped as the terrible pain was somewhat alleviated. The angara’s bare hand returned, re-palming the side of her neck as his thumb pressed to the joint between her jaw and her ear. It was a familiar position for them. A place where he liked to touch her, but this was the first time that he’d done it without his gloves.

Jaal’s skin was smooth and hairless, although much firmer than a human’s. Ryder could feel a scale-like texture along the top of his palm, and his flesh was incredibly warm. Not for the first time she shuddered for reasons she wasn’t quite willing to examine, her breath leaving her lips in an uncertain waver.

The angara’s expulsion of air mirrored hers, his chest heaving with shaky breaths as his arm tightened around her, his bare thumb stroked her cheek. His face was so close to hers.

“Jaal–” she began.

“I’m here,” he said.

He was always “here” for her, and Ryder was beginning to have a hard time remembering when he wasn’t.

The two of them had been getting along much better over the past couple weeks. He’d been standoffish at first, but now he wasn’t, and although Ryder was well aware that angara were physical with those they considered friends, she couldn’t help but feel unnerved by the way that he held her. Jaal was careful when he touched her, but he touched her often. In the beginning it had just been the staring—intense, uncomfortably focused gazes that made her feel like she was butt-naked in front of him—but after the Roekaar the looming had become physical, too.

It was the little things: the way he would hover or how his hand would go to the small of her back. He wasn’t even from the Milky Way, and they did things _differently_ here, but some days Ryder couldn’t help but wonder if she was losing her mind in the process.

_It doesn’t mean the same thing to him_ , she told herself. Except sometimes Ryder wondered if it did.

About a week ago she’d reached for a toolbox on the top shelf in the tech lab. Gripping the edge of the furniture—squinting in the low light as she listened to the _hum_ of the Eezo core—she’d strained on her tiptoes as she’d attempted to reach the device without knocking over the cabinet in the process. Halfway between grunting unsuccessfully and clambering up the shelf like a monkey, the light in the room had dimmed as someone had come to stand behind her. A hand had come to rest on her hip.

Ryder had gasped, nearly jumping out of her skin in surprise. Without meaning to she’d stumbled back, her balance deserting her. She’d collided into a very firm, heavily muscled chest covered by smooth blue fabric. The hand on her hip had slid around to spread against the front of her waist, low on her belly. Without compunction Jaal had leaned over her, grabbing the toolbox off the top shelf to bring it down for her inspection.

“Is this what you wanted?” he asked, his deep voice rumbling through his chest. He hadn’t let go of her.

One of Ryder’s hands had automatically reached up to cover his, her much smaller fingers interlocking between the angara’s as her arm had pressed on top of it. The shape of Jaal’s forearm had been visible beneath the skin-tight fabric of his biosuit, her body nestled between a pair of thickly muscled legs. He was at least a good foot taller than her.

Shaking slightly, Ryder had reached out and taken the toolbox from him. Her fingers had curled tremulously around the edge.

“Yes,” she’d said, trying to maintain her composure. Her cheeks had flushed. The way he was holding her was making her shiver in the most inappropriate ways and she felt guilty for it. “T-thank you.”

He still hadn’t let go. Ryder had been too numb to break away. She hadn’t known if she **wanted** to.

When she didn’t move the hand on her front had slid lower, cupping the flat, un-armored flesh between her bellybutton and pelvis. Very slowly Jaal’s other hand had gone to her neck, his fingers drifting around to the front, his thumb pressing to the joint behind her ear. The angara’s head had dipped down as he tilted his face towards hers. She’d been able to feel his breath against her temple. He smelt like the air before a thunderstorm, and tangentially she’d wondered if it was bioelectricity.

_“That is correct, Ryder.”_

Mortified, she’d shut SAM out. It was like having her dad watch her kiss her first boyfriend.

“Ryder?” Jaal said. The hand on her belly was hot, even through the glove. Her flesh was tingling where his palm ghosted across her middle, a golden warmth building in the pit of her abdomen as her shirt began to ride up to expose her navel. Jaal’s hand slid beneath it without pause.

_He’s not doing what you think he’s doing_ , she’d told herself. Ryder had shut her eyes and bit down on the inside of her cheek to stifle a groan. The angara’s hand was moving downwards towards the rim of her low-slung pants. Her off-duty jumpsuit was bundled low over her hips, the arms of it tied in a casual knot directly above her pelvis. Jaal’s cheek was pressed to the top of her head. _He’s angara, he’s angara, they do things differently–_

“Jaal, I–” Oh **_god_** _,_ that hand was low. It was going lower. How did he know where to touch her–

“Do you two need a room, or should I get out my omni-tool and start recording?” Vetra had asked.

Jaal hadn’t moved from where he was standing, turning his head. Ryder had, pulling away from him with a nervous smile as she’d looked towards their turian teammate. Her legs wobbled, balance unsteady as she’d clutched the toolbox to her chest.

“No,” she said, her voice cracking like a prepubescent boy’s as she’d stumbled past Vetra. _Oh fuck_ , how embarrassing. What if Vetra misunderstood? “No, just grabbing this.” She’d shaken the box at the turian for a moment, trying to draw attention to it, then beat a hasty retreat.

Just before she’d left, Ryder had turned back. Jaal was still standing in the same spot, but he was facing Vetra, his hands clenched at his sides and cat eyes glowing bright. He’d been glaring murderously.

Vetra had seemed distinctly unamused in return.

_Angara are hyper-social_ , Ryder tried to tell herself, but each time she said it the excuse got weaker. Both Lexi and SAM had warned it about it: that once angara warmed up physical contact was the norm. Applying human social constructs to them was unfair, and she’d been placing undue importance on Jaal’s individual actions when she shouldn’t have been.

Ryder had run into a female angara on the docks just before they left Aya: a historian named Avela. The alien had been all over her like white on rice, azure eyes wide with delight, her expression awestruck as she ran her bare hands over Ryder’s exposed face like some sort of brand new bauble.

“You’re so soft and small!” the female angara had gushed. Ryder had swallowed nervously, her hands held awkwardly at her sides as she’d struggled to come up with a response that would be considered appropriate. Was the angara supposed to be touching her? Was she supposed to touch them back?

Not too far away, Liam had been standing on the dock with one arm folded across his front, the other braced against his mouth to hide his expression. He’d been laughing.

“You look like a _veekar_ flower,” the angara continued, matter-of-factly. Her hands had been on either cheek, stretching them out of shape as if to test the firmness. “They grow in the shallows and their petals turn dark when they thirst.”

A moment later the alien had gasped, her expression becoming one of horror. She’d patted Ryder’s very brown hair. “Oh no!” she’d exclaimed, and she’d sounded mortified. “I’m so sorry! I have kept you talking. Do you need water? Should we find a pond? There is a stream, just down there–”

Liam’s stifled laughter turned into outright guffaws. Ryder had smiled tightly and counted backwards from ten.

“What’s your name?” she’d asked instead, trying to be polite. The angara had grinned, utterly delighted.

“Avela,” she’d said. “And yours?”

“Sara.”

“ **Sara** ,” Jaal was saying, shaking her awake. Suddenly Ryder was back in the present, staring towards an indigo blue sky. It was too dark to see if clouds were building, but the air felt moist and cool. There was the _crack_ of distant thunder, but no flash of light.

Jaal’s hand was cupping her face. His glove was still off, his peacock blue eyes seeming to glow as he stared down at her.

He had such beautiful, expressive eyes, Ryder decided; like miniature nebulae surrounded by dark space, wide with slitted pupils and titled sharply at the corners. She could stare at them for hours. The way he was holding her was lulling her into a trance.

“Sweetness, are you alright?” he asked.

She could breath better and there was no blood in her throat, but everything still ached and she felt weaker than a baby. Her head was throbbing and the vertigo was intense.

“M’fine,” Ryder mumbled, and she smiled as his thumb crossed her cheek, stroking back and forth in a soothing motion. She loved being held by him and her brain was so broken she couldn’t seem to control her tongue. “You’re here.”

“You need to stay awake,” Jaal insisted. There was a terrible thread of urgency to his tone. “Can you do that for me, _tavetann_?”

Ryder meant to tell him _yes_ , but instead she blurted out “I’m glad… m’glad you're safe. I would’ve been sad if you died.” She sniffled at the thought, tears coming to her eyes. Then she was thinking of Scott, rotting like a vegetable in the med wing, and the tears came quicker.

_Congrats, Ryder. You’re officially out of it, you pathetic weakling._

Later, she would hate herself for it.

“M’sorry Jaal,” she said, and she was crying in earnest. A terrible expression crossed his face when he saw her tears, somewhere between pain and tenderness. He quickly wiped some away. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong. M’sad.”

The _Tempest_ had been burning. She had no home.

One arm wrapped around her back. Jaal reached behind her knees with the other, his grip on her adjusting slightly as he picked her up and cradled her close to his chest. Ryder’s side still hurt, and when Jaal stood to his full height the movement jostled it. She hissed in pain, gritting her teeth.

“Lean against me,” he instructed softly. Sara mumbled an incoherent, wordless _thank you_ , uncaring of personal boundaries except for the sharp, stabbing sensation in her head. The vertigo was even worse six feet off the ground, to the point where the world was spinning. Jaal shifted her higher so her head was resting against his shoulder. The pain wasn’t so bad this way, but the dizziness increased.

“Jaal,” she mumbled. He adjusted his grip so he was holding her in a single arm. The other reached for his weapon, still discarded on the ground. She was small enough that he could manage both. “Jaal, I like you best. More…more than anyone.”

She was **definitely** feeling off. Oh god, why had she said that? Ryder was still having a hard time focusing, but when she opened her eyes she found the angara staring back. He shouldered his weapon and drew a bright blue hood from beneath the folds in the fabric around his neck, covering his head. Soon afterwards his un-gloved hand returned to her face, tenderly smoothing away tangled hair. His covered head bent down and a hard, smooth brow pressed to hers, his flattened nose rubbing against her rounder one. His breath was warm on her lips.

It was a very cat-like gesture, but the way that Jaal was holding her felt human. The press of his lips to her cheekbone just beneath her eye did too, and in her addled state Ryder wondered if it was a kiss.

“I do too, dear one,” he said, and he choked on his own words. Then, “We will find the others. I promise.”

Jaal didn’t say anything after that, simply readjusting her in his arms and drawing his hood further around his face. He loped away from the crash site, leaving the wreckage and Sallin’s body behind them.

* * *

 

Three broken ribs. A severe concussion. Internal bleeding and she was having some sort of god-awful allergic reaction to something in the air. The medi-gel had repaired her broken ribs and taken down the worst of the swelling, but there wasn’t enough to repair the rest. Most of it had been used up on contact with the crash, and their supplies were gone.

Ryder had lost her personal comm in the fall. Jaal’s was down due to atmospheric interference and SAM seemed to be offline or damaged. The rest of the crew was missing and they had no idea where the _Tempest_ had fallen.

The angara’s right shoulder had been burned from the explosion, but when she asked him about it Jaal told her not to worry. “I’ll heal,” he’d said as he trekked through the underbrush, but he didn’t tell her _how_ or _why_. Ryder was too out of it to press the subject further.

She was still so frail she couldn’t walk on her own, and whatever was in the air was doing a number on her systems. Her fever was spiking. Jaal carried her the entire time, cradling her close to his front. He was disconcertingly at ease in the twilight-lit terrain, but visibly wary. They’d landed in a steep, narrow valley that looked like an alien version of the Guilin Mountains: long and vertical with a flat, waterlogged basin ringed by dozens of rounded buttes on all sides. Everything in the vicinity—from the forest floor to the tips of the massive peaks—was covered in jungle flora that was denser than the Amazonian rain forest. The air was stiflingly humid.

Giant, gnarled trees with fan-shaped leaves seemed to close in around them, hundreds of feet tall with interlocking branches. Roping cobalt vines like spider webs hung from the canopy, iridescent orange fungi and pale purple moss coating the jungle floor. The moist air reverberated with the hoots and hollers of what sounded like monkeys; with the strange, eerie screech of what Jaal simply translated to “birds.” They were far from civilization of any sort, but it didn’t mean they were safe. The angara—despite his size—was not the biggest thing in the jungle, and more than once they heard the faint, tell-tale drone of a Kett ship overhead, looking for survivors. The storm moving down from the south end of the valley was crackling with static, creeping between the mountains’ fingers like dry ice across a chilly mound.

In between periods of cognizance, Ryder managed to glean that Jaal wanted to find an open area so they could get to higher ground. The jungle itself was dense with bioelectricity: so much so that it was interfering with his equipment. It kept them hidden from the Kett but it meant they couldn’t signal the others if they were still alive. The strange smell in the air was getting worse; a heady lavender that was making Ryder’s head throb. Her whole body tingled, her throat dry. Multiple times Jaal stumbled while carrying her, and the more feverish she became the more noticeable his fumbles were.

Soon he began panting, holding her a little too tightly. At one point he had to brace his hand against a nearby tree, pronged feet slipping through mulch and dirt. Beneath the darkness of his hood Ryder could see the blue-lit outline of his face: the way his lips were parted and moist. She wanted to ask if he was hurt, but she was half out of her mind with a strange sort of ache, the epicenter low in her belly. She hated the hollowness.

“H-hot,” she said. If she hadn’t been so weak she would have started tearing off her armor in an effort to cool down. The moist, heavy air was making it difficult to breathe. Jaal’s bare hand—which was currently braced against the tree—had begun to glow with beryl-toned luminescence along the back of it, scaled patterns lighting up along his skin. He swallowed hard.

“Jaal, I feel so hot. M’not… I’m not well–”

“Shh,” he said through a convulsive gasp. With what appeared to be herculean effort the angara hoisted her up higher, readjusting her in his single arm as he tried to push himself away from the tree. His theropod legs dipped to the left, the ground shaking a bit beneath his gait as he stumbled before regaining his balance. When Jaal spoke again his words were slurred, like he was drugged. The Shelesh dialect he was using was glitching through the translator and the constant rumble to his voice had gotten ragged. “Shh, I will find… _avel pasa, naavkar_ …I will…”

He couldn’t finish the sentence. Eventually Jaal’s stumbling and Ryder’s fever got so bad that they were forced to stop.

They didn’t make it to higher ground, but they did find a river: winding and thick, the water a deep mauve in color as it cut its way through the heart of the valley. As they broke out of the tree line the giant pink orb re-emerged, bands of asteroid dust from a nearby moon cutting diagonally across the horizon. In front of them the river curled into an oxbow. It was surrounded by twenty-foot stone monoliths that stuck up in a series of rocky teeth. There were no trees this close to the rapids, but lilac moss and luminescent algae were covering everything in a dense purple carpet. Thickets of cobalt mushrooms and yellow-orange fungi grew amongst them, patches of fuchsia-colored ferns collecting in the shadows by the rocks.

The hollow was beaded with dewy moisture, and there was a low, cloying mist lingering along the ground. Ryder could hear the roar of a waterfall somewhere in the distance, but she couldn’t see it. When they got close to the river Jaal’s knees began to buckle. He quickly ducked under an overhanging shelf of shale-like stone along the water’s edge. Setting her down on a thicket of purple, he cradled the side of her skull to stop it from flopping. Jaal was always so careful with her, and Ryder’s chest heaved with the thought.

_He doesn’t mean it like you mean it. Stop daydreaming._

“I don’t feel well,” she confessed in a tremulous whisper. His palm felt so cool, and he was normally warm. Her skin was burning. Ryder’s back arched at bit, her hands pawing at the alien one on her face. The lavender smell was overpowering now, and her armor felt too tight. Her hair was soaked through with sweat and she wanted him to keep holding her.

Jaal murmured something, his other hand now bare of its glove as it came around to undo the latches on her exo-suit around her shoulders. Ryder whimpered in pain, her eyelids fluttering. Her feet slid uselessly through the dirt as her muscles spasmed. There was a warm, wet heat building between her legs, and in her addled state she couldn’t place it. What was wrong with her? “Jaal, I don’t, burning—m’too hot, what’s wrong–”

“You have a fever, dear one,” he said. His hand was trembling as he helped her discard the top of the suit. “It’s making you ill.”

Beneath his hood, Jaal’s eyes looked strange. His irises were thin slivers of azure, like the light around the center of an event horizon. Was she imagining it? God, she was imagining a lot of things. Where was **SAM**?

“Jaal–”

“You’ll be fine, I promise. It just has to work its way out of your system–”

Ryder tried to ask him what was causing it, but she was half out of her mind and she couldn’t remember how words worked. Once she was down to her wetsuit the angara’s hand fumbled with the zipper in front of her throat, his large fingers managing to snag the clasp to pull it down to her collarbone. As soon as the fabric was free he slid his hand beneath it, putting his palm to the bare skin on her neck. Immediately Ryder felt relief where he touched her: a cool, numbing sensation, the unbearable burning beneath her skin replaced by a tingling, pleasant chill.

She sighed, her fingers clinging to his as she tugged on the angara’s arm in a mindless attempt to bring him closer. His expression was tortured.

“Sara, you–” Jaal was kneeling over her, his broad back hunched. He stumbled over his words, palming her neck. The buzzing sensation between Ryder’s legs had become an ache: an instinctual one that she’d felt before, once a month when the walls of her uterus were ripping themselves from their casing to tumble downwards. _God, not that too_. Of all the things to happen **now**. “I am not—you must breathe. Please.”

“Jaal,” she said on a breathy sigh, her lips parting. Her insides were crawling out of her body to try and seek shelter from her skin _._

One thickly muscled leg was between her own, Jaal’s knee inadvertently pressing against the junction between her thighs as he hovered over her. The pressure brought her some relief, but not enough. Ryder arched against him, her hips instinctively rotating in an effort to put more weight on the aching hollowness beneath her armor. The hand on her neck pressed down hard with the movement.

“You are sick,” Jaal said, much more forcefully. He seemed to be saying it for himself. When she moaned—turning into his hand, seeking the coolness—the angara gasped, then bit down on his bottom lip to stop the sound from escaping. His hand slid around the nape of her neck as he pressed his forehead to her temple. His nose was against her skin as if smelling her, his teeth grinding in pain.

“I like you,” Ryder babbled. It wasn’t the crash. She’d been fucked up bad, but this wasn’t _it_ , and there was something wrong with her. She was ranting like a madwoman and she could feel a _newness_ blooming inside of her. “I’m afraid when you’re not… what’s happening to me, Jaal–”

“You are sick,” he repeated. He was gasping for breath right along with her, his rofjinn pooling in looping pools of blue against the moss-covered floor. “You are ill. It is a fever. I’m so sorry darling, I did not think—I did not realize you would—it will not last forever, you will feel better soon–”

“ **Jaal** ,” Ryder said, clinging to him as she search for something she couldn’t put a name to, lips parted and eyes unfocused. The only relief she could derive from the heat was through him touching her. They’d fallen from something, she remembered distantly. A ship? The _Tempest_ ? But where was the _Tempest_? “Jaal, it hurts, m’so hot, help me–”

“I am,” he said once more. There were open lips on her throat, cat-like canines scraping against the delicate skin, and Ryder didn’t know how they’d gotten there. “I’m going… I’m going to try to get a signal up on the ridge. I’ll be back, I… I, oh ancestors, I promise–”

“W-what if I die?” she wheezed. Ryder was seeing stars. There **were** stars above them, but they weren’t the ones she was familiar with. She was in so much pain. “What if—don’t leave me–”

“Never,” he promised, and even though his vocals were distorted the translator managed to make out the gist. Lips were pressed to her throat a second time, open-mouthed and wet. A third time, before moving up to her jaw. His skin was so smooth. “Never, my dearest, never, I will, we will, sweet ancestors you can—I will be back **soon** –”

“J-Jaal, in-inside me. It… I  need–”

Those smooth lips were pressing to her jaw once more before the angara was physically tearing himself away from her, staggering up from the water as he went searching for higher ground.

“I will be back,” he said, readjusting his hood. He took a step, stumbling drunkenly, his pronged feet shifting noisily through the sphagnum moss as he braced himself against an algae-covered rock. “I will… I will be back, sweetness. I promise.” Then he was gone.

It took Ryder a moment to realize that he’d vacated.

The thunder boomed—low and muted, but getting closer. Lightning flashing across the sky in a sheet over to the east. Still no rain fell. When it finally sunk in that Jaal wasn’t there—that she was alone, yet again—Ryder lay there gasping, overcome by fever. A high, warbling sob built at the back of her throat. She bit down on her tongue so hard it bled, eyes watering as she tried to contain it. The relief she’d felt when Jaal had touched her had already vanished. She knew he wouldn’t leave her, logically. He’d promised more than once that he wouldn’t.

When Ryder had told him she was basically an orphan, not three days ago—that she had no family to speak of, save for a brother who was halfway gone—his expression had been horrified. The angara had not been pleased by the news.

Angaran expressions translated well to their human equivalent, Ryder was learning. They had distinctly _in_ human traits that were readily apparent in the way their upper lip would curl to reveal a set of canines, or how their nose would wrinkle like a cat’s when they were smelling something that others couldn’t discern. But if they were scared, they looked scared. If they were angry, they _appeared_ angry. Their smiles meant the same thing, as did their sobs, and if their expressions were a strange mixture of horror and anguish—as Jaal’s had been, in that moment—Ryder could pick up on it, more or less. She could be relatively sure of what he was thinking and it was a distinctly unpleasant experience.

Feeling horribly self-conscious at the time, Ryder had looked towards her feet when faced with his naked emotion. It had streaked its way across Jaal’s features like a fast moving comet, immediately revealing his thoughts. Ryder really, really liked him, in a very _he’s-nice-and-big-and-I-feel-safe-around-him_ sort of way. She’d wanted to be Jaal’s friend. The idea that she’d ruined their already fragile connection through a clumsy, culturally taboo confession made her feel sick to her stomach. _Stupid Ryder, stupid, why can’t you keep your mouth shut–_

“You’re alone?” Jaal had asked, that deep reverberating rumble of his—so much like a lion’s purr—catching in his too-broad chest. Being alone without a family in angaran culture was almost a sacrilegious thought.

Ryder kept her eyes trained to the ground, trying to tell herself that it didn’t hurt as much as she thought that it did. That she didn’t know _why_ it hurt more with him, when Addison was always on her case and Cora was making faces in her direction as if to imply that she was a walking disaster. Most times Ryder just rolled with the punches, because everything was so bright and new in the Andromeda galaxy. She genuinely wanted to please. But she also knew that she wasn’t her father. She knew she could never live up to the galaxy-sized shoes that he’d left in his wake and if he’d been conscious neither could Scott. N7 marines were a different breed and the infamous Shepard had proved that. It was like comparing coal to diamonds.

Maybe it hurt because it was **Jaal** , specifically, and the Angara was so devastatingly genuine. He meant every word that came out of his mouth and he was almost unrealistically kind. Ryder was terrified that when he voiced the truth she’d be cast to the dark reaches of space for her sins.

“Mhmm,” she’d said, picking nervously at the edge of her slowly-ratting sleeve in answer to his question: an anxious tic that was getting worse as the days went by. She’d bit down on her bottom lip, rolling it back and forth across her teeth in order to wet it. When she did she heard a sharp intake of breath. Soft, heavy _thuds_ sounded beneath Jaal’s feet as he took a step forward. 

“Sorry, it must seem weird to you,” Ryder continued in a rush. She’d known what angaran social structures were like.

He’d been so much bigger than her as he’d moved into her personal bubble of space: so incredibly _built_ that she knew she looked a bit mismatched beside him. Humans were galactic shrimps in not one but two galaxies. The only ones who were remotely comparable in size were the asari, and it was a humbling sensation.

“It’s terrifying,” Jaal admitted. Ryder had felt her heart drop into the pit of her stomach at his words. She’d swayed a bit on her feet. _Oh no_. _Disappointment_. She was well versed in that. As Jaal stepped closer she’d tried not to cry. Out of nowhere a hand had come up to cup the side of her face, his fingers spanning her entire head. Ryder’s lips had parted with a moist _pop_ at the contact, a soft sigh of surprise escaping her.

“It must be terrifying for you,” Jaal continued, and there was another hand on the other side of her face, gently carding hair away from her temple. “To be all alone.” The angara had been staring at her and it had made Ryder feel a bit unsettled, like she was privy to some cosmic joke that she couldn’t yet understand but desperately needed to in order to stay safe. Perhaps it was the guilt that was unsettling her instead.

Jaal’s eyes had looked like the Serpent Nebula back home in the Milky Way, and he took her breath away in a manner she was sure her father would scold her for—in a manner that she herself was not pleased with. She’d been very much aware of it and embarrassed.

_Don’t end up like Shepard_ , her father had warned her, and although Ryder knew her dear-old-dad thought the world of the long-dead woman, she also knew why he was concerned. Alec didn’t get upset over nothing.

“A bit,” she admitted on a croak, terrified that if she moved at all—if she spoke too loudly—he might vanish, like her brother and father and mother before him. She felt so scared. “I’m kind of tired.”

Jaal’s expression became soft and open, devoid of judgement. For a moment Ryder could pretend that it was another human standing in front of her; that she **wasn’t** being comforted by a six-foot-three alien that looked like a cross between a giant, predatory cat and an iridescent fuchsia-colored squid. It wasn’t that she minded that Jaal was alien, either. She’d grown up on the Citadel and being the minority population on a heavily mixed station was as natural to her as breathing. She was just worried about her inability to connect with her own kind, and what that said about her as a person. If she had to go to Andromeda to find friends—if she was that unpalatable to that many people—how could she look at herself in the mirror without cringing?

_I’m pathetic._

She was so lonely.

“I’m sorry,” he’d said. Ryder had blinked out of her thoughts and suddenly she’d understood. _Oh. That’s right._ The horror was **for** her, not against.

Jaal’s hand had slid across her back, drawing her into a hug. His body curled around hers, her own nestled between his legs as he towered over her. Ryder had been acutely aware of the way his hand had cupped the bottom of her head as he’d pressed her close. How his other hand had trailed down to the small of her back, making her shiver in a way that felt distinctly unclean considering the topic of their conversation.

_He’s not into you_ , she’d told herself, yet again. _You_ **_shouldn’t_ ** _think about him like that. Jaal’s too kind and you probably look like a sack of potatoes to him. He doesn’t deserve this._

“Thank you,” she’d said, rather stiffly. Ryder hadn’t really clarified what she was saying _thank you_ for, nor had she asked why he was hugging her. Her own hand had come up without meaning to, clinging to the forearm near her shoulder. She’d turned her face into his chest, breathing deep. Her skin had felt tingly where Jaal had touched her, even through their clothes; her thoughts had grown fuzzy and there’d been a pool of warmth low in her belly, making her knees feel weak. Ryder had heard an exhalation of breath above her. Something large and hard had been nestled against the front of her belly, and as the angara had pressed her to him it seemed to grow larger. At one point Ryder could have sworn that it twitched.

_Muscle spasm_ , she’d told herself, trying to ignore the hardened protrusion despite the fluttering sensation beneath her rib-cage that warned her that she knew exactly what it was. Ryder had sunk into his embrace, grabbing the arm near her face more firmly to keep herself steady. _He’s not human. It’s just some weird alien biology that you shouldn’t be complaining over_.

She was simply glad to be held again: to have someone who treated her like she meant something beyond being the de-facto pathfinder.

“You do not have to be scared anymore,” Jaal whispered into her hair. There was a rumble to his voice that hadn’t been there before; a deep, reverberating baritone that made her toes curl and her lips part in an involuntary whimper of breath. “I will keep you safe.”

Ryder had remained limp in his arms, her legs like jelly as something pressed to the top of her head. Lips, perhaps? Definitely lips, she’d realized a moment later—smooth, but not as soft as a human’s. The hand on the back of her head slid down to the joint between her skull and her spine, tilting her face to look at him. Her mouth had opened on a shallow sigh in return, her fingers curling in the fabric of his cloak as her eyelids fluttered.

At the sound of her sigh the lips on her temple had parted, teeth scraping slightly against her skin. His nose had been pressed to her temple. Was he smelling her?

“It’s not your fault,” Ryder had said a bit breathlessly, letting him position her as he pleased and reveling in the fact that they were definitely still friends. _You don't hold your friends this way,_ a voice that sounded a bit like SAM told her, but Ryder ignored it.  

“Then I shall make it mine,” Jaal said, simple and direct. Ryder had opened her eyes at that, frowning slightly. For some reason, she got the distinct impression that maybe he was talking about something else.

“ _Ryder, I am detecting a sharp increase of bioelectric energy within the area,”_ the actual SAM warned, but she’d ignored him too.

“Thank you,” she’d said, very softly. Just a bit longer in fantasy-land and she could return to reality. Sara put her hand over his and tried to tell herself that she was reading it wrong. _He’s angara. They’re affectionate. It’s not what you think._

_Don’t end up like Shepard_ , her father had warned her. _You’ll get hurt._

Jaal had changed after that. The two of them had been on better terms for awhile, but soon he began _hovering_ , and when he couldn’t hover he became agitated. Ryder wasn’t even sure if agitation was the right word. He still laughed when he found something funny, still made ill-fitting jokes and was almost disarmingly sweet when he got excited over some new Milky Way factoid he’d just discovered. Everyone considered him a friend. But when Liam put his hand on her waist that morning—as a joke, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively—the angara had abruptly stepped between them, pushing him away with a bit more force than necessary, his upper lip curling to reveal his teeth. His expression had been angry.

Jaal and Liam got along famously. They **never** fought—not even the merest hint beyond playful ribbing. No one in the room had known what to make of it.

Before Ryder could ask him what was wrong Jaal had blinked and shook his head, stumbling back in a visibly distressed manner before storming off. The mood afterwards had been sombre. Ryder had dreaded suiting up for their next mission, or asking him anything.

Then the Kett had attacked and the _Tempest_ had gone down a few minutes later.

“Jaal,” Ryder groaned, back in the present. She was flat on her back, limbs jittery as her fingers dug into the loam beneath her. Everything was stretched too thin and not stretched at all. “Jaal—Jaal I think I’m dying.” But it was death of a different sort.

Something was changing inside her: something was _rising_. Ryder heaved, chest aching, and she didn’t know what was worse—the pain in her pelvis or the god-awful, stiflingly humidity that was so pungent she felt like she was drowning in lavender. She wanted to go home. She needed relief.

“ **Jaal** ,” Ryder repeated, even as her thoughts became fragmented, but there was no answer. Skin flushed, hair sticking to her temples, Ryder looked around herself, seeing double and barely able to stay conscious. Stone overhead, moss beneath. The gentle slope leading down to the shore and the angara was nowhere to be seen.

Right. _Right_. He’d gone to find higher ground, she remembered—he’d told her as such, his lips on her throat. She wasn’t going to make it that long and she couldn’t wait for his return. Her skin was burning and she had to save herself.

Delirious with want, Ryder groaned as she rolled onto her side, the joints in her hips aching. Her tangled hair fell across her face, covering her eyes as she ran her left palm along her body, searching for the remaining latches on her armor. Her fingers were numb and removing the exo-suit took forever. Clumsy hands fumbled with finicky latches, running over sharp-edged metal and outer-atmo material as she hooked her digits around the greaves and tried to shrug them off.

Eventually she managed to kick the remaining pieces into a pile near her feet, panting so hard she almost fainted. She wanted to call out to Jaal again, but by that point she didn’t even have the energy. Thunder boomed. There was another crackle and flash of lightning, but the rain refused to fall. Amongst her own pants and the croak of nearby insects, there was the tell-tale shuffle of something rooting around the ferns. Even being stripped down to her wetsuit did no good, and Ryder continued to claw at it, fingers dragging down the front of her zipper as she slid her hands beneath the opening of her collar, curving her palms over clammy shoulders. She began to peel away the dark grey material like a second skin.

Ryder wasn’t wearing much beneath it: a thin, sleeveless undershirt that had been worn so many times it was stretched out of shape. White, low-cut underwear that sat low on her hips, soaked through in the crotch and wetter than the water.

_Water_ , she thought in desperation, finally kicking the wetsuit off in a heap. Ryder turned her head in the direction of the river, rolling onto her front. Even as the thought began to form she was dragging herself across the ground towards it. Her thighs were slick as they rubbed against one another, her nipples painfully hard. Ryder panted with exertion. Her breasts pressed flat to the undergrowth, fingers tangling in the smooth, knobby moss for balance, her underwear riding low as her hip scraped against a rock.

The river wasn’t far away, but it felt like a mile. Beyond the oxbow it was moving quicker, pushed along by the current. In the divot where Jaal had left her the liquid eddied in circles, the top thick with water lilies. Her underwear snagged on the edge of a shale-like stone as she shimmied forward, pulling it past her hip to hook it around the curve of her rear. Another slow, painful push forward, then her briefs were around her knees with the friction, followed by her ankles as they were cast haphazardly aside. A breast was exposed, the strap of her tee twisting around her forearm. There was chafing between her legs as she pulled herself forward: between the smooth, rounded ridges of the flora and the slick, over-stimulated folds at her junction. Ryder sobbed as she stared mindlessly towards the waterline, her insides clenching as she sought to move quicker. Her arms had an iridescent, scale-like pattern forming along them, creeping toward her face like a rash.

_I’m infected_ , she thought. _It’s in me, it over me, I need it inside–_

Ryder pulled herself across the final foot of soil, the water lapping around her arms as her hands sunk into the silt. When she finally managed to slide all the way in she let out a sob of reprieve at the coolness. A few more tries and she was able to pull herself into a sitting position, her body buoyed by the water. Her legs tangled in the threading vines of the nearby lilies.

Ryder shivered at the contrast in temperature, kaleidoscope colors spiraling in nebula-like patterns across her vision as the world around her doubled, then tripled. _Deeper_ , something told her. She had to drown in it. Reaching out, she blindly pushed aside swampy detritus until her hand hit stone. With a torturous effort Ryder dragged herself to her feet, stumbling heavily and her nails scraping against the algae-covered rock as she toddled blindly into the river. Her chest heaved as she struggled for breath, her nightshirt clinging to her body and her naked limbs shivering on the open air. Her thoughts were mindless.

Overhead, a _crack_ of thunder sounded. The sheet lightning turned into a spike, touching down atop a mountain. Ryder could feel the mud between her toes, weeds tangling around her calves as she wandered deeper into the river. The entrance between her legs was clenching so hard it felt like a muscle spasm. A fluttering sensation just past the pleats of flesh above her thighs announced itself, achingly familiar. Ryder fought the urge to reach down and slip her fingers inside as she searched for it, seeking release. The familiar, fluttering sensation was intermingled with an intense pain low in her pelvis, directly above it. She bent double, stumbling forward as she clutched at her womb. Deeper. Deeper into the water. Maybe that would fix the pain–

“Sara!” someone called from the bank. It took Ryder a moment to place the voice. When she did she turned, staggering away from the shoreline as she almost fell over in the river.

Jaal was at the edge of the oxbow, dropping his gun as if it were nothing. His hood was tumbling off his head as he surged into the water to grab her, one bare hand outstretched in offering.

“Sara,” he begged. She whimpered, stumbling again as she shook her head _no_ , but she didn’t know why. “Sara, please. You’re sick. The water is deep, please, come here, you’re going to drown–”

Jaal was gasping. Deep, harsh breaths as if he was dying. His huge blue eyes were transfixed on something. The curve of her hips, she realized a second later; her heavy breast hanging free from her shirt, the rim of the tee caught beneath it. He lost his footing and staggered, bracing his hand against the stone. “Sweet one, ancestors, please–”

“It’s e-empty,” she whimpered. Her hands twisted in the ruined fabric, thin shoulders shaking. Ryder didn’t know what she was saying or why she was saying it. She was crying hard, water lapping around her thighs as she sobbed her way through delirium. She was so uncomfortable she didn’t care that she looked a mess; that her reputation was being squandered in some Podunk alien river, fucked up and naked, lost in a jungle. Who would have thought she came to Andromeda for **this**? “Jaal, I want to go h-home–”

“We will make a home together,” he said more forcefully. Ryder gulped, standing in the shallows like a deer in the headlights. What was he saying? Did he mean it? Spirits she was in so much pain, nothing made sense. “We will return to Aya and we shall make a home and we shall have lots and lots of _evara_ and… darling, sweet one. Stop. Stop, I promise to take care of you, just please come back. You’re going to…” he stumbled again, deeper into the river. “Please, Sara, I worry–”

Ryder knew he did. His words were so earnest but the heat was drowning out all conscious thought. She bit down on her bottom lip hard enough to draw blood, one hand clutching at her shirt as the other cupped her front. She clenched her legs together, partially to keep her insides from falling out and partially to ease the tension. A hand slid down over hairless folds, slick with fluid that wasn’t water.

“Darling, no, you are not well–”

The heel of her palm pressed up, fingers sliding in, and Ryder gasped as Jaal gasped with her, his eyes transfixed on the way her fingers disappeared with a _squelch_. Ryder stared through him, so relieved to have something inside her that she didn’t even realize it was herself. Rain began to fall.

“Jaal,” Ryder panted, slim fingers pressing in, then up at an angle. She couldn’t articulate her thoughts, but she knew what she wanted. Jaal was reaching for her, saying something in Shelesh. He was speaking to her over the crack of thunder, his words ragged as he begged her to step forward.

A flash of lightning streaked by, rain pattering like coins against the water. A moment later Ryder was falling, her already weak legs giving out. Jaal caught her, his hand going around her waist to keep her steady, his fingers splayed against her back as he held her. The other hand reached down, disappearing beneath the water between her legs to grip her thin wrist. His lips pressed to the top of her head as he tried to disentangle Ryder from herself and pull her back to shore.

“Sara, let’s go back,” he urged her, and his voice was breaking. “You need to rest.” But she didn’t want to.

The rain was beginning to come down in a thunderous torrent, striking against nearby rocks and the deep purple river with a deafening tempo. Jaal’s body was curled over, his sopping rofjinn pooling around him as the tail ends drifted across the surface of the water. His broad back heaved, his pants louder than hers. When he found her hand—the path of his own stopping stopping abruptly as her fingers disappeared, slipping in and out in a steady rhythm—he halted, gasping in shock. Then let out a wavering sigh, pressing his forehead to her temple.

Ryder hung in his grasp, half out of her mind with want. Her mouth hung open and her eyes were sightless as she clenched around herself. Jaal’s thumb pressed to the inside of her wrist as his fingers ghosted over the top of her palm, following the movement of her limb in time. He didn’t try to stop it.

“I dreamt about you,” he finally admitted, his deep voice cracking. Ryder drunkenly turned her head towards his, seeking comfort, and Jaal turned his face too, his nose pressed to her cheekbone. “From the beginning, I dreamt… I saw you, and smelt it. I could not let you leave. You were going back onto your ship and I thought… ancestors, you’re so beautiful. I dreamt of you doing this.”

Ryder panted, teeth scraping against the cloth covering his bicep as rain dripped from her nose and eyelashes. The river was rising. _That’s an_ **_alien_ ** _that’s holding you,_ a small voice reminded her, but Sara didn’t listen. Her body was singing beneath his hands wherever he touched her, telling her _it has to be him._

Jaal’s giant palm cupped hers, fingers shadowing her movements as she robotically guided him through it. He seemed entranced. His flat, cat-like nose moved down to her throat, lips opening and teeth scraping along her jugular as a pebbled tongue emerged, pressing against her skin. When she didn’t push him away the kisses went lower. His arm tightened around her back as he shifted her upwards so he could rest his mouth to the hollow of her throat by her shoulder, trekking his way across her collarbone and the milky rise of her breast before moving up again.

“I adore you,” he admitted brokenly. “I cannot… when he touched you–”

The _thickness_ nudged her belly as she sagged against him; the thickness seemed to be the entire **length** of her belly, and as his hips rolled against hers Ryder could feel something else beneath it, brushing against the back of their hands. The protrusion was large and swollen, heavy and shaped like a sac. When her knuckles bumped it Jaal gasped, hips jerking as he kissed her jaw. The fingers curled around her hand beneath the water’s edge were long and thick. When he ran his digits against the shivering pleats Ryder groaned, her hips rolling towards his as she bit down on his arm to stifle a scream. The stroking became intentional a second later: a glide of dense, speckled flesh atop a soft, pliable opening as he marveled at the texture.

Jaal’s palm was glowing, the light refracting through the water. So were Ryder’s arms.

“Oh darling,” he said. There was current of electricity beneath his fingertips as he ran himself along her; a humming vibration that had Ryder sobbing with need. Jaal’s words were slurring badly. “My darling, you’re so soft. I have never… ancestors, it’s like **silk**.”

“Are you like this,” Ryder managed to choke out, and she meant _not human, but human enough._ She’d wanted him since the first time she’d seen on Aya. Since she’d seen him stalking down the stairs towards her, prowling like a big cat, his gaze predatory and shoulders so broad. “Are you… me… am I…”

_He’s strong_ , a voice that was not her own seemed to say. _The genes are good._ The glowing, speckled pattern that had been traveling along her arms had reached her face. The angara’s upper lip had twitched when he’d first approached her, slitted pupils dilating in nebula-like pools of blue. Ryder had been so small standing next to him that Jaal could have reached out and snapped her neck, and their sheer dimorphism had caused her to whet her lips, a blush staining her cheeks. _He’s strong_ , the voice had repeated. _Big_. _The children will be too._ Immediately she’d banished the brain worm, horrified and embarrassed.

_What am I_ **_thinking_** _?_

She’d wanted him and she’d tried to hide it. _Jaal, Jaal, Jaal_ her body was singing, _I love you, do you love me too,_ and she didn’t know why but the thought of living without him was torture.

“The docks,” he was babbling. They were stumbling back through the water. They almost fell as his leg wobbled and Jaal lost his balance. His lips were on her throat, his words spoken between kisses. He seemed as crazed as her with the heat. “The docks, I could smell it. I almost took you there–”

The throbbing hardness was straining against the fabric of his wetsuit to the point where the stitches were buckling. Ryder shivered under the deluge of rainwater as Jaal’s palm pressed atop hers, sliding downwards. Then there was something _new_ inside her, next to her fingers: strange, alien digits following the path that she’d started. Vibrating, electric pulses hummed against convulsing muscles. Something large and thick rubbed along her inner folds, opening her up like a flower.

Ryder groaned loudly, losing her balance as she sunk into the water. Jaal rumbled as she went boneless atop his hand, deep in his throat. His nose went back to her jaw as moved his fingers in time with hers before taking over. A single digit was as wide of three of her own, and he felt so big. The iridescent, scale-like pattern that had lit up along Ryder’s arms was mirrored in his, traveling across his cheeks and along the bridge of his nose to trail over his crest akin to a comet.

Stars. Ryder was seeing stars. She was being touched by one.

“Jaal–”

“Precious,” he said through a half-frantic kiss, his lips to her cheek just below her eye, and _oh_ , he liked her like that, too. The movement of his fingers was languid and terrifyingly familiar. He felt human, but he wasn’t. Ryder panted, clinging to him as the digit pressed to a dense, brightly burning spot beneath her pelvic mound. Her hands shot out of the water to grip his biceps when he did, her mouth falling open as flickering, multicolored light exploded across her field of vision. Rainwater plastered her shirt to his chest. “Ancestors, you are so precious. I adore… I feel like I’m going **mad** –”

“J-Jaal–”

“You’re all I can think about,” he continued without pause, pressing another kiss to her jaw, and then a third. His finger was still moving back and forth with a slow, methodical tempo, the water lapping around his arm with the disturbance. “All I can think of, when, I… _ah…_ when I touch–”

He groaned again, panting loud, and then his lips were on hers.

He tasted like rainwater and something sweet. He tasted like honey. There was a humming current along his tongue that immediately set Ryder’s mouth abuzz. “When I see you, I cannot—ancestors, you’re so small. Mother of the world, you’re tiny. I’m so sorry, I need… _ah_ … I need to stop–”

The thought of Jaal leaving sent her into a near fit of panic. Ryder voiced her fears with a wordless plea for clemency, reaching for his face. Immediately he returned the gesture, his mouth open and movements hungry. Thoughts of _stopping_ were forgotten.

He had beautiful lips, Ryder decided; smooth as polished glass and slightly firm. Her own gave way beneath blunted teeth as he bit down on them. They stumbled, veering towards a nearby rock.

“Aya,” he was gasping against her. Ryder was pawing at his cloak, fingers scrabbling against his broad shoulders as she tried to get it off. His hand was still moving inside her. “We’ll go to Aya. A house, by the water–” He wasn’t making any sense, his tone taking on a hysterical canter. The rain was beginning to fall faster. Luminescent speckles were spreading to Ryder’s breasts.

A rumble of want echoed deep in Jaal’s throat as her insides clenched around him, the sound getting ragged as she tried to lift her leg and hook it around his hip, but he was too tall. His hand left her channel in an abrupt, almost violent movement. Ryder gasped at the emptiness only to clutch at his front when he picked her up and pushed her against a nearby monolith, balancing her atop his knee as his hand cradled the back of her head, tilting it for better access.

“Sara,” he sighed into her mouth. She loved the way that he said her name: the r’s rolling, his accent heavy. Her left leg was thrown over his forearm, foot in the air. The vines from the nearby water lilies were tangling around their thighs as the river swelled with the deluge. Ryder’s whimpers of despair turned to a hum of pleasure instead.

Small fingers fumbled with the metal hooks along the front of his rofjinn. Jaal’s hand left the back of her head, his fingers joining hers to help her along in their haste. His lips remained on hers. Ryder had fucked before this—awkward fumbles with military brats in darkened corners, followed by a fling with an asari maiden—but the way that Jaal touched her made her insides _sing_. The blue-skinned commando was the only point of reference that was even remotely comparable, and the asari had dumped her ass just before she left the Milky Way, claiming she wanted someone a little more mature, and older.

_“Less dead,”_ were the exact words, but Ryder had been asleep for over six hundred years. Her personal history mirrored the ancient earth tale of Sleeping Beauty, only the princess wasn’t really a princess and she carried a gun. The evil fairy was a moon-eyed prophet wearing a halo made of bone and her prince was an alien.

_Don’t end up like Shepard_ , her father had warned her, but it was too late for that. Ryder was terrible at following instructions.

“Jaal, I think I love you,” she admitted. She was so out of it she didn’t even have the sense to feel embarrassed by the horribly candid confession. Jaal made a keening sound against her lips, ragged with relief. He was speaking in Shelesh, trying to pull his clothes off faster. Ryder dragged her fingers over smooth, strangely tough skin, hands scrabbling hard against his broad back for purchase. He seemed to enjoy it. She heard him telling her in-between kisses that he adored her more than the spiral arms of the galaxy; that he hadn’t been able to understand _why_ he did, only now it was clear.

Ancestors, he’d wanted this. He’d wanted her. Please forgive him he’d never seen anyone more beautiful in his life, he was obsessed with her skin. He’d thought he’d been going crazy but he wasn’t, they were compatible, and “sweet one, darling, Sara, Sara, you’re a gift from the stars, we’ll be forever, together–”

His lips were back on her throat.

The rofjinn had fallen into the water, freed from his shoulders. Ryder yanked at the clasps along his neck to loosen the biosuit, his own hands reaching between their legs to pull at the straps holding his lower half in place. Jaal was broad as a mountain beneath his clothes, dark purple and splattered with iridescent speckles like a belt of stars. His biceps were thicker than her thighs, her limbs ridiculously delicate-looking next to his. She seemed so pale. They managed to get him partially out of his outfit; one arm and half of his broad chest stripped of the bullet-proof fabric, the clasps yanked open all the way to his groin.

The angara hoisted both her legs over his forearms, his lips on hers as he grabbed her ankle and swung her foot over his shoulder. His other hand dipped between them to free himself from the biosuit. Ryder ground herself against his knee, hips rolling forward and back arching as the muscles inside her spasmed, her labia opening and closing like a hungry mouth.

“Jaal,” she begged, and he met her plea with a rumble that sounded like the thunder. _He’s human_ , something was chanting. _Human_ ** _enough_** _,_ it corrected a second later, but then thought came crashing down when something impossibly firm pressed to her entrance, probing inwards.

Oh spirits, he was too big.

Ryder gasped as reality hit her, feet jerking uselessly in the air and hips automatically rolling forward as they sought to escape, but it only caused the shaft to slide in deeper. One inch, then two. She couldn’t see it but she could feel it: narrow on the top before quickly widening out, covered in ridges that vibrated with energy. His cock was thick and slippery as an eel. She felt like she was being impaled by a piston. “J-Jaal, Jaal, god, you’re too big–”

Jaal was deaf to the world and her words were useless. The angara grunted, burying his face against her shoulder and hand spanning her rear as he used the other to guide himself in.

Ryder’s head tilted back, her crown hitting the rock with a _thunk_ as her hips bucked, feet twitching by his shoulders as she was stretched all the way open. Her body strained as it attempted to sheath itself around the massive object: vaginal muscles convulsing, labia turning red and rubbery as they were stretched to the breaking. Her breasts heaved up and down against his front, her lips parting and eyes rolling back in her head. Even as her mind was screaming at her that it wouldn’t work, her body was screaming _yes_ and _oh god I think I love him_. Her legs spread further on their own accord, hips tilting on an angle to make sure he could slide in easier. She felt like she was going insane.

Jaal seemed to become aware of her whimpers, and he stopped. His hand left his shaft to cradle her face, his lips pressing to her jaw as he whispered reassurances and told her he loved her, rainwater dripping off the ridge of his head. Ryder’s hips bucked again. There was something swelling inside her as his cock shifted forward with the movement, ridges thrumming against convulsing muscles. Ryder groaned, half in need and half in agony. Her mouth gaped open like a fish, her head lolling into his hand. She tried to breath through the stretching.

“Breathe with me, my love,” he gasped into her skin. He seemed even more out of it than her. It was hard to hear him over the sound of the rain, and the river had risen nearly a foot. His rofjinn was lost to the current. “Breathe… oh ancestors, you are so… I **can’t** , I’m sorry, I can’t pull out–”

It was impossibly tight. Still he tried, nose to her throat and hand cradling her head as he attempted to disentangle himself, but when he did there was a sharp, stabbing pain—a burning _tug_ , like nothing Ryder had ever felt. She let out a shout, writhing violently. Immediately he slid back in, rambling apologies, only this time he buried himself all the way to the hilt.

His base was pressed to her swollen lips, the bulbous protrusion of his sac beneath it. Ryder rocked her hips forward, desperate to get away from the pain, and then all of a sudden his hips were rolling against hers in time and they were moving.

“J-Jaal,” Ryder begged. She didn’t know what she was begging for. She was dying. She was living. Whenever he pumped into her, her skin warped outwards with the movement, her abdomen stretching around his shaft as it swelled to accommodate him. It felt like he was growing larger. “I don’t… I don’t think you’ll fit.” But he **was** , only they couldn’t break loose, and in a distant, half-mad way Ryder realized that _size_ was something the two of them should’ve discussed before deciding to fuck an alien. Jaal was still apologizing for something. Anything. She didn’t care.

“I must finish,” he groaned, his thrusts growing deeper. His nose pressed to her cheek, his eyes closing as his mouth fell open in rapture. “I must… finish inside… I can’t, I’m sorry–”

A slickness was taking hold beneath the water: a tingling vibration that Ryder had felt from his fingers, the ridges sliding easier against her insides. The burn of the stretching began to dull to a pleasant, vibrating _hum_ , her eyelids growing heavy. Jaal’s palm slid up to the small of her back, guiding their movement, and soon Ryder was rocking forward to meet him, learning the motion like he’d learned hers.

She was seeing stars: the birth of nebula in a cosmic nursery. They’d reached across time and space to find one another, the moons of many mothers rising between them. The air filled with the _patter_ of the rain, intermingled with Ryder’s breathy moans. Her breasts slapped up and down atop the waterline, the liquid sloshing around them with the movement. There was a tangled water lily dangling from her ankle, swaying in time to his thrusts.

“Jaal,” Ryder said, clinging to him for stability. She loved him. She wanted him, even through the pain. Inside her the shaft pulsed, vibrating with energy. Jaal pumped faster, both hands sliding down to grip her rear. His pants grew as heavy as the sac between his legs, muscles clenching. Ryder’s gasps of discomfort were turning to a groans of desire. “Jaal, I think I’m dying.”

“Don’t worry, sweet one,” he whispered, and he told her he loved her, again and again. He thrust upwards, kissing her throat. His flat, cat-like nose was against her skin. “We were made for each other… I…I… _ah_ … can smell it.”

**Author's Note:**

> **Author's Note**
> 
> A huge thank you to [acrossthegrey](http://archiveofourown.org/users/acrossthegrey/pseuds/acrossthegrey) for challenging me and the rest of the scum to Smutathon April, and an even bigger thank you to [Trebia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Trebia/pseuds/Trebia) and [holocroning](http://archiveofourown.org/users/holocroning/pseuds/holocroning) for beta’ing. For the Shelesh dialect in this, some of it's canon, some of it I had to guestimate, so take it with a grain of salt. A note about this story and it’s relation to the rest of the collection: _Doe_ is set in the same timeline/canon-divergence as [The Meridian Word](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10193165/chapters/22636613) , but you do not need to read _Meridian_ before this to understand the story. I’d still recommend checking it out, though! Trebia and I are going at Shakarian with a weedwhacker.


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